THERE WERE TWO all-night eateries within a one-mile radius of Renegade Headquarters, and Adrian and the team were frequent patrons at both. Sometimes they just seemed like a better option than coming back to HQ and getting something out of the vending machines or snacking off the cold salad bar in the cafeteria, which stopped serving hot food after nine. Fighting crime burned a lot of calories and sometimes a superhero needed a gooey grilled cheese sandwich or a giant chocolate chip waffle smothered in whipped cream.
He didn’t know if cataloging data or whatever it was Nova was doing for the arms department burned a lot of calories, but Adrian did know that everyone needed to nosh when they were awake in the wee hours of the morning, and he doubted that an inability to sleep changed that.
As it was, he needed a distraction, anyway. Since the team was still technically on the Nightmare investigation case, which was fast becoming the Anarchist investigation case, they’d spent the last few days following every lead they could to try to find Ingrid Thompson, the Detonator. Frequenting any business she’d ever been known to visit. Calling on any citizen that might have had a connection to her, no matter how tenuous—a classmate from high school, a long-ago neighbor. So far, everything had led to dead ends, and Adrian couldn’t help but feel like they were wasting their time. They needed something recent and concrete. Video footage or an eyewitness spotting or … he didn’t know. Maybe a stash of glowing blue explosives discovered in an abandoned warehouse. Something tangible.
In lieu of something that would further the case, though, Adrian had three nights of restless sleep and, now, a bag full of sandwiches from Mama Stacey’s Greasy Spoon. Since he didn’t yet know Nova well enough to be able to guess her preferred sandwich order, he’d brought an assortment—a grilled cheese, a turkey club, a roast beef, and a southwest chicken wrap. He felt like he had the major bases covered, sandwich speaking, and Stacey had thrown in six bags of potato chips because, quote, “Gotta keep our heroes fed.” Wink.
He still wasn’t sure what the wink meant.
Anyway, he hoped Nova would think the gesture was thoughtful. He hoped she wouldn’t be annoyed that he was interrupting her work. He hoped maybe they’d be able to sit and talk, because he kept thinking about the night spent in the office building across from the library and how it had been really nice to talk to her. To get to know her, at least a little.
The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to know her even better. Questions kept popping into his head when he wasn’t around her, but then vanishing the moment they were together, and all the conversations turned toward the investigation again. Questions like, where did she get her ideas for her inventions? And, what was the most bizarre thing she’d ever done to keep from being bored at three o’clock in the morning? And, did she have a boyfriend?
He was pretty sure he knew the answer to that last one. She’d never talked about a boyfriend. But then … she hadn’t talked much about her personal life at all, so he couldn’t be sure.
He’d even had this outrageous idea as he was leaving Mama Stacey’s. This fantasy of sneaking into Nova’s cubicle while she was gone and laying out the spread of sandwiches and napkins like a picnic. He could even draw some candles, except that would probably be too much, and he didn’t want her to think this was, like, a romantic thing.
Except a part of him sort of did.
His palms were damp by the time he got to headquarters and he kept having to switch the paper to-go bag from hand to hand so he could rub them dry on his pants. The scanner near the door recognized the signal from his communicator band and unlocked with a clunk. He pushed through the revolving door and immediately heard someone yelling.
Adrian glanced at the security booth, where the guard on duty was screaming into his communicator. “—only two healers on night duty, and they’re both on their way. But what was she thinking, going in there in the first place?”
Frowning, and wondering if something had happened to one of the patrol units, Adrian jogged down the steps into the lobby. His gaze shot up to the bay of windows where Nova had been working lately. He could see the light on in her cubicle, but her desk appeared to be empty.
His hair stood up on the back of his neck as he crossed the inlaid R in the tiled floor.
An erratic pounding made Adrian draw up short. He turned his gaze toward Max’s quarantine, where a faint light was casting a glow across the lobby.
Max was standing at the quarantine wall. He was wearing plaid pajama pants but no shirt. One hand was wrapped up in cloth—perhaps the missing shirt—while he pounded the other fist against the glass. He was yelling, his face wild with panic, and it took Adrian a moment to understand him.
Adrian! Hurry!
The bag of sandwiches fell from his hand, hitting the floor with a crackle and thud, and then Adrian was sprinting up the stairs to the quarantine. As soon as he reached the sky bridge he saw a body lying inside the quarantine.
His heart jolted.
It was Nova.
She was unconscious.
She was inside the quarantine.
He slowed for only a second, but still—he did slow, and he knew it, and he would later feel like the biggest coward for that moment of hesitation. But then he was running again, as fast as he could. Before he could sort out what he was doing, his hand was grasping the handle of the quarantine door and yanking it open. He didn’t know how long she’d been in there, but he knew that every second could make a difference. Every second that passed, her strength would be leaching from her, bit by bit.
Her power draining away, bit by bit.
But he would not be any safer if he didn’t hurry.
Once past the door, his vision attached itself to Nova. He could reach her. He had to reach her.
On the far side of the quarantine, pressing his body against the glass wall, Max was panting as if he, too, had just dashed across the lobby and the stairs and the bridge. His thin, pale shoulders were shaking, and Adrian could see now that the shirt around his hand was soaked with blood. Glass buildings were toppled and broken everywhere he looked.
“I’m okay,” said Max, before Adrian could speak. “I sent a message to security. The healers are on their way. But Nova! You have to get her out of here!”
Adrian gulped.
Whatever had happened, there was nothing he could do for Max. But Nova …
Gritting his teeth, he launched himself over the skyscrapers, careening down the streets of Gatlon City.
He was halfway across the quarantine when he felt it. Like someone had uncorked a drain in him and all his strength was seeping out.
Mostly he felt it in his hands. His fingers went cold. The muscles, the ligaments in his joints, they felt like they were atrophying with every step he took. Fingers curling inward, becoming useless and frail. Fingers that would never again hold a pen or a paintbrush … hands that would never again create reality from imagination …
Hurling himself over the hospital, he knelt beside Nova. His breaths were strangled wheezes as he scooped his arms beneath her. Her head fell against his chest and he turned and sought out the exit.
The door felt impossibly far. How many steps would it take to reach it? Thirty? Fifty? Adrian’s head spun.
He wouldn’t make it. Not if he had to stumble every step of the way.
He crushed Nova’s body against him and crouched down. Though he didn’t know if it would work. He couldn’t be sure if that ability had already been sapped from him.
Still—he took in a deep breath and leaped.
His body sprang upward. Power coursed through his legs, sending him and Nova soaring over the skyline. For one delirious moment he thought, this is what it would be like. To fly over the city, to really fly …
Then the ground rushed up to meet them, the jagged glass buildings like hundreds of spikes jutting upward. Adrian adjusted his body with the lost momentum, and he and Nova crashed down onto Scatter Creek Row, mere steps away from the door.
His muscles were shaking from the effort to stand, but he did stand. His hands and arms were so numb he would have doubted they were still attached if he couldn’t see them, and yet he still tucked them beneath Nova’s armpits, locking his elbows beneath her shoulders. His legs felt like sodden rags, but he took a step back, then another. And another. Gasping. Dazed. His head swimming. His eyesight blurred.
He collapsed into the antechamber, dropping Nova beside him. With one final, pathetic lurch of his foot, he kicked the quarantine door shut.
And he lay there, panting. Choking. Dying, he would have thought, except he’d never heard of Max’s ability actually killing someone. That’s how it felt, though. Like all the life was flooding out of his body.
His head lolled to the side, and he peered at Nova. Her body was splayed across the floor beside him, but her face looked almost peaceful.
Was she unconscious … or asleep?
It was an important distinction, but he didn’t know how to tell the difference.
His hands were still numb. There was no pain, only nothingness, which seemed worse.
Rolling onto his side, he wriggled closer to her. “Nova,” he said, patting her cheek. “Wake up.”
She was breathing, at least. He felt for a pulse at her throat and it was steady and strong, and when he looked at her face he could see her eyes twitching beneath her eyelids.
Was it possible she was dreaming?
He decided in that moment that he wouldn’t regret the decision to go in after her. Even if he never drew another picture, even if all the powers of the Sentinel were gone forever, he wouldn’t regret it, so long as she was okay.
Because it’s what any hero would have done.
“Nova?”
It seemed almost cruel to try to wake her, when she hadn’t slept for so very long, but something told him she would understand.
He placed a hand against her cheek again, which was how he realized that sensation was returning to his fingertips, because he could feel the softness of her skin, the promise of warmth beneath his palm.
He turned her head to face him. “Please wake up.”
And she did.
Not like a long-sleeping princess, who might have emerged from a leisurely nap with a refreshing stretch, a graceful arch of her back, eyelids flickering groggily from such a satisfying rest.
No. Nova McLain bolted upright and screamed.
Her glazed eyes fell on Adrian, and still shrieking, she scrambled to her feet and backed into a corner. Her breaths rattled, her head tossed from side to side, scanning the small antechamber.
“Where—what—” She gasped, her chest spasming with each labored breath.
“It’s okay,” said Adrian. Somehow, seeing Nova standing made him realize that strength had seeped back into his limbs, too, and he pulled himself to his feet. “You’re okay, Nova. You just … you fell asleep.”
“I did not,” she spat. But then her expression turned from brutal and violent to terrified, and for a moment, Adrian thought he could see her on the verge of crying. Then she turned away, hiding her face against the wall, and pressed her palms over her ears. “Not again. Make it stop.”
Adrian took a step closer. Her ragged breaths were slowing.
“It’s all right,” he said, hoping it was true. When he was close enough, he laid a hand on her back and, when she didn’t flinch, he placed the other on her arm and turned her to face him. “You’re at Renegade Headquarters,” he said. “You’re safe.”
She swallowed. Though her breaths were uneven, she had stopped shaking by the time she pulled her hands away from her ears. She still looked bewildered.
“Max,” she said. “Max fell.… He hurt himself.… I…” She hesitated, her voice going quiet and uncertain. “I went in to try to help him, but then…” She met Adrian’s eyes. “Did you say I fell asleep?”
“I think so.”
“Not passed out. Not fainted. Fell asleep. That’s what you said. Why did you say that?”
He glanced beyond the antechamber windows and spotted two members from the medical staff rushing from the elevator bank, both in civilian clothing rather than their usual scrubs.
Turning, he pulled one of the hazard suits down from a hook on the wall. “We call Max the Bandit, right?” he said, undoing the zipper down the full length of the suit. “It’s because he … he steals powers. When he gets close to a prodigy, they start to lose their abilities. Their powers just … fade away. The closer they get to Max, and the more time they spend in his presence, the more likely it is that…” He hesitated, watching the dawning realization on Nova’s face, coupled with mounting horror. “That the effects will be permanent.”
He held the hazard suit toward her and she took it dumbly, her gaze unfocused. “And I passed out,” she whispered. “I never pass out.”
Adrian took down the second suit and began preparing it too. When the two healers burst into the room a second later, he was already holding the suit out, ready for them to step into it.
“Security said—” started the first, a man Adrian had never learned the name of.
“I know,” Adrian said. “Max needs help. I think he’s lost a lot of blood.”
“What about you? Do either of you require medical attention?”
“No,” said Adrian. “We’re both experiencing effects from being in the quarantine, but … that’s it.” He glanced at Nova. “Right? You weren’t hurt otherwise?”
She shook her head, offering no resistance as the woman took the other suit from her and began stuffing her legs into the pants. “Stand back,” she said, as they each pulled on the helmets and gloves.
Adrian pulled Nova out of the antechamber. They stood on the sky bridge, watching as the two healers forged their way through Max’s city. The kid had sat down against the wall and his pallor was ghastly pale, his eyes shimmering with unshed tears as the doctors started to unwrap and inspect his wound.
“What happened?” said Adrian.
It seemed to take Nova a long time to answer. “He was levitating.”
When nothing else followed, Adrian turned his focus on her. She was staring into the quarantine but he didn’t think she was really seeing Max or the doctors or even the glass city. Her eyes were unfocused and haunted.
“Nova?”
“He saw me watching him, and I think it startled him. He fell and…” She gulped. “I think one of the buildings went through his hand.”
Adrian flinched.
“That’s when I ran in, to try to help. I didn’t … I didn’t know.” She blinked, clearing whatever thoughts were clouding her mind. “How long was I in there for?”
“I don’t know,” said Adrian. “You were unconscious when I got here.”
Nova fixed him with a look of disbelief. “Why are you here?”
He gulped, and realized then that he was still touching her, a hand on her arm, the other on her back. She hadn’t moved away, but now that he could feel every sensation through his hands again, he became intensely aware of it. The soft fabric of the uniform. The warmth of her skin through the cloth. He remembered taking her hand at the parade, drawing on her wrist, and how he’d been so blithe about it at the time. How it had seemed like nothing at all—just something nice to do for a stranger.
But now the idea of drawing on the inside of her wrist seemed unforgivably personal.
“I brought you sandwiches,” he said, and he knew it sounded ridiculous as he dropped his hands to his sides. “But I dropped them in the lobby.”
Brow furrowing, Nova glanced over the side of the bridge, and there it was. The paper bag, tipped over, one paper-wrapped, toothpicked sandwich having tumbled out onto the tile.
“I thought maybe you’d be hungry?” Adrian added, somewhat lamely.
Nova stared silently at the lonesome bag for what felt like ages, before she finally turned back to him. Her expression seemed to have cleared somewhat. “People don’t just lose their powers, do they? He steals them. He … absorbs them.”
Adrian nodded.
“So why aren’t you affected?”
He sagged against the rail. “I was. I am.”
Her voice became weak as she said, “We’re not prodigies anymore?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “We don’t get a lot of willing test subjects to help us figure out exactly what Max’s ability does, or how long it takes for it to become … permanent. But I do know there are people who have been around him and not lost their powers. At least, once they’re able to get away from him.”
Nova set her jaw and reached for Adrian, settling her hand firmly over his. There was something determined in the look, bordering on desperate. She reached behind him. Her fingers brushed against his low back and he jumped.
“Where’s your marker?” she said.
Adrian blinked at her. His marker?
Feeling his cheeks warm, he fumbled for the hidden pocket sewn into the lining of his left sleeve. He pulled out the marker and tried to hand it to her.
“Not for me,” she said, though she grabbed his hand anyway so she could hold it still while she ripped off the cap. “Draw something.”
He stared at her, realizing what it was she wanted. Though whether or not he’d lost his powers wouldn’t prove whether or not she had, he could see it was important to her. And, truth be told, he needed to know too. Even if he was afraid the result wouldn’t be what he wanted.
“What are you waiting for?”
“I’m scared,” he said, and he started to laugh when he said it, because he knew what was done was done and avoiding the truth wouldn’t change anything. But still. In this moment, for perhaps this last moment, he was still a superhero.
He and Nova both.
But Nova only let out an annoyed breath. “Don’t be a dolt.”
“A dolt?”
“Draw something!” she yelled, and her anxiety became clear, and for whatever reason, Adrian could see this was the thing she was latching on to, perhaps because her power wasn’t something she could so easily test. Would she ever sleep again? Would she sleep like a normal person? It could be hours, even days, before she knew for sure.
Schooling his face, Adrian picked up her hand, like he had at the parade, and flipped it over so her palm was turned upward. He started to draw, not really thinking about what he was drawing, just allowing himself to sketch whatever came to mind first.
And what came to mind was a dinosaur. A tiny velociraptor, no bigger than her thumb.
Relatively small, but surprisingly ferocious.
When the hasty drawing was finished, he looked into Nova’s face, but she was staring at the creature inked onto her palm. “He’s adorable,” she murmured.
He swallowed. “Here we go,” he said, swirling the pad of his finger over the drawing.
The creature roared to life, peeling up from Nova’s skin and perching there in the center of her hand. It looked eagerly in each direction, probably scouring the place for prey.
“He’s a nice dinosaur,” said Adrian, realizing that he was beaming only after he said it. “I’m pretty sure.”
Nova’s shoulders relaxed and she watched the beast scurry up her ring finger. It bent its head and nibbled at her fingertip, though it didn’t appear to be hurting her.
“Okay,” she breathed. Then again, “Okay. You’re okay. I’m probably okay too.”
Adrian didn’t know what to say to this. He still wasn’t sure how long she’d been in there.
The dinosaur leaped from Nova’s hand onto the rail and dashed in the direction of the staircase. Adrian wondered how good its sense of smell was, and if perhaps it had already detected the fallen sandwiches.
“Adrian?”
He met her gaze.
“Where did he get telekinesis from?”
“Telekinesis?”
“Max. He was levitating. He was … he’s powerful.”
Adrian stared at her. “Max? Powerful?”
“He must have had sixty buildings hovering in the air, in addition to himself. Do you know how rare that is?”
“I … yes,” he said, still frowning. “But Max can’t.… He can only…” He trailed off. He had only ever seen Max lift one thing at a time with his thoughts, and usually not very well. “Are you sure?”
Nova gave him a frustrated look. “I’m sure.”
His shoulders drooped. It was clear from Nova’s expression that she knew exactly what she’d seen, and he had no reason to doubt her.
Besides, he knew exactly where that power had come from.
What he couldn’t fathom, though, was why Max would hide it from him.
“Adrian?” she said again, more forcefully this time.
He swallowed. “Ace Anarchy,” he said. “He stole that power from Ace Anarchy.”